On July 20, 2022, the 23rd anniversary of the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong in China, Epoch TV’s show Crossroads aired the story “Organ Harvesting and Torture: Exposing the Chinese Regime’s 23-Year Persecution Campaign.”
DAFOH’s Deputy Director Dr. G. Weldon Gilcrease joined the host, Joshua Philipp, to explain how the Chinese regime orchestrated a countrywide system of forced organ harvesting. Dr. Gilcrease noted that this horrendous practice began in the military hospitals and has been met with little resistance both inside and outside of China, in large part because of state run propaganda, which has served to dehumanize and demonize Falun Gong practitioners. He pointed out that ever since the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, there has been an exponential increase in transplant surgeries across China.
Dr. Gilcrease explained that Falun Gong is a life cultivation method of mind and body rooted in traditional Chinese Buddhist and Taoist thought that is centered around the basic tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. This is antithetical to the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign of smashing the Four Olds (Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits) that was initiated in 1966 to destroy thousands of years of Chinese culture. Falun Gong became so popular among the Chinese people, he added, because its teachings resonate with traditional Chinese cultural values.
Dr. Gilcrease said it is very difficult in this country to determine where patients have actually obtained organs. While this is concerning, he noted that what is more troubling is that Chinese surgeons have been trained in transplant techniques in the West, including many prominent medical teaching centers in the United States.
Complicity of U.S. institutions who continue to collaborate with Chinese hospitals and doctors is highly problematic given the preponderance of evidence of live forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience in China, Dr. Gilcrease argued. We need to protect our medical institutions from being complicit in crimes against humanity, he said, and U.S. hospitals which are collaborating with their Chinese counterparts need to disengage immediately to end complicity with illegal and unethical practices.
Both Philipp and Dr. Gilcrease agreed that forced organ harvesting is the worst example of a totalitarian regime devaluing human life and using the medical profession to eliminate a large segment of their own population.
When asked what viewers could do to help, Dr. Gilcrease urged them to learn more at dafoh.org, to tell all the medical professionals they know about organ harvesting in China, and to ask their legislators to support House Bill 6319 Falun Gong Protection Act which, if passed, will take strong steps toward ending U.S. collusion with China’s genocide.
